Victory Odes

Victory Odes

By Pindar.

Translated by Arthur S. Way.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Introduction
4. Victory Odes
   1. The Olympian Odes
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
      4. IV
      5. V
      6. VI
      7. VII
      8. VIII
      9. IX
      10. X
      11. XI
      12. XII
      13. XIII
      14. XIV
   2. The Pythian Odes
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
      4. IV
      5. V
      6. VI
      7. VII
      8. VIII
      9. IX
      10. X
      11. XI
      12. XII
   3. The Nemean Odes
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
      4. IV
      5. V
      6. VI
      7. VII
      8. VIII
      9. IX
      10. X
      11. XI
   4. The Isthmian Odes
      1. I
      2. II
      3. III
      4. IV
      5. V
      6. VI
      7. VII
      8. VIII
5. Endnotes
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Introduction

Though it is quite possible, and indeed probable, that the Epinician Odes do not represent Pindar’s highest achievement in the realm of pure poetry, the student of history has every reason to be thankful that, of all his works, it is these that have escaped the ruin that has overtaken the rest. For they furnish us, perhaps more fully and more convincingly than any other remains of antiquity, with a solution of a problem which has troubled historians. Some of these have exclaimed against what they consider the narrow, shortsighted, parochial spirit of the Greeks generally, in failing to see that their material prosperity, their safety and true independence would be best secured, if not by frankly enrolling themselves under the hegemony of one strong state (preferably Athens), at least by a close federation as binding on each member as that of the United States of America. Still more writers have denounced what they consider the unpatriotic selfishness of the aristocratical party in the several states, their unscrupulous plottings and alliances with the enemies of their respective cities, and, when they gained the upper hand, their ruthless treatment of the democracies.

Does not Pindar furnish us with the key to this jealous isolation, by showing us how each city cherished a belief in its divine origin, how the first parent of each state, or its founder, was a divine being, whose very name it perpetuated⁠—for in Pindar the name of the goddess-founder and that of the state are interchangeable⁠—Thebe, Aegina, Cyrene; or how its founders were demigods who settled there in obedience to divine commands? To subordinate this heavenly guardianship to other powers might well seem sacrilege. And the tradition of the sacredness of an independence thus hallowed, when once established, might well survive the age of unquestioning faith.

For the families of the aristocracy, to whom a thousand memories called far more powerfully and insistently than to any other order of nobility in the world’s history, there were incentives to political exclusiveness whose cogency we cannot appreciate unless we take the Olympian hierarchy as seriously as Pindar did. The chronique scandaleuse of Olympus, which shocked Plato, inspired Pindar. While repudiating belief in anything derogatory to the Gods, he does not consider their amours with mortal women (or even their paederasty) in that hght. The men whose praises he sang had in their veins the blood of Gods: their human ancestors were half divine, and their achievements were worthy of their high descent. The sons of the great houses whose lineage was from Heracles, Aeacus, Perseus, counted themselves of different clay from the common herd: they recognised in their hearts that they owed no duty to a democratic constitution: they never ceased to chafe under the yoke of equality with beings whom they held scarce fit to be their servants, and to intrigue against a system which placed their personal liberty at the mercy of the caprice of the “base,” and allowed their wealth to be exploited for purposes with which they had no sympathy. No wonder that they accepted with complacency the poet’s digressions into the old heroic myths that to us are but fairy tales: for them these were unassailable fact. Their records in song were the charter of their superiority to the world around them, of their right divine to govern their fellow-men.

It must also be remembered that these highborn men were superior to the lower classes not only in pride of lineage, but they bore about with them the witness to this in their bodily development. The aristocrat was a stronger man, and far more skilled in the use of that strength for personal encounters than the average democrat. He was a man of leisure, and we may say that practically all such men made it their aim, their daily practice, to perfect their physical condition in the gymnasiums which were in every town. In many states, perhaps in all which belonged to the Peloponnesian League, a small organized body of aristocrats kept the far more